1. Technical Field
Embodiments of the present invention relate to emulation systems, and more particularly to an emulation system and a driving method to shorten a data transmission time between an external computer and an emulation board.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Emulation systems are used to verify intellectual properties (IPs) or products including IPs (e.g., a device-under-test (DUT)). A DUT can be verified in less time using an emulation system as compared to using a simulation.
Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) may also be utilized when emulating products including IPs. Xilinx™ LX330 is an FPGA that is equipped with about 2,500,000 gates and 900 primary input/output pins. A DUT including an IP formed of tens of millions of gates may be emulated by several FPGAs.
For example, assume that a DUT is emulated by means of two LX330 FPGAs. The internal signal lines between the two FPGAs are connected through external input/output pins of the FPGAs. If the number of internal signal lines between the two FPGAs is 9,000, 9,000 signal lines may be interconnected to each other using time division multiplexing at a ratio of 10 multiplexers for every 1 demultiplexer. Due to the inordinate amount of signal lines, it may take a long time to emulate the DUT and transfer results of the emulation to an external computer.
Thus, there is a need for emulation systems that can transmit data to an external computer in less time and methods of driving such emulating systems.